NORAD

Merry Christmas Eve from the One Day, One Job Team! We’re taking a little time off to celebrate the holiday, but that doesn’t mean we are going to stop giving you job ideas every day.

Every time this year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command begins tracking Santa Claus on his amazing route across the world bringing presents to good boys and girls. Typically, NORAD is responsible for ensuring that our country remains safe, but Santa’s annual feat is just so incredible that they have to pay it attention. How could you ignore a man who is able to deliver a child’s toys once every two to three-thousandths of a second?

In case you don’t already know what NORAD is, it’s a coalition between American and Canadian forces that watches the North American skies for threats. Their headquarters is built into Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado in a way that makes it almost indestructible. From here, they basically track all airspace over North America and whatever goes through it, whether it’s commercial planes, Santa’s sleigh, or ballistic missiles (let’s hope that never happens). If you want to learn more about what NORAD does, check out the Wikipedia entry.

Ok, so we don’t have the inside track on entry-level jobs at NORAD because they’re pretty secretive about what they do (being located inside a mountain and all). In fact, you need to me in the military to work at NORAD – your best bet is to enlist in the Air Force, although other military branches can also be assigned to NORAD. So if your dream is to track Santa on his way to bringing kids presents, take a look at some of the NORAD leaders’ biographies to get a better sense of what it takes to work inside Cheyenne Mountain.

Tomorrow we’ll have another short, Christmas themed post, and then on Wednesday it’s back to in-depth posts about great entry-level jobs.